Lilith Fair Is Back

in 2010 and some people aren't sure we need it, but I say, Have you ever been to Pitchfork? They do a good job of having women (and woman-fronted bands) headlining so you don't notice as much, but it's always incredibly guy-heavy.

And in spite of this, they are mean enough to say on their site about this incarnation of Lilith Fair:

we don't yet know whether we'll get to hear Paula Cole reprise her "Dawson's Creek" theme song. (Sorry. Old habits die hard.)

And in spite of myself I LAUGHED. But I was mostly laughing at Dawson's hair. That song is pretty catchy, especially if you cut someone off by singing it.

Are there other festivals you've been to where dude-centrism is really noticeable?

I'm Not Sure About Video Games Making Kids Violent

but watching people smoke in the movies--especially in movie theaters, especially in black and white--has always made me want to smoke (at least during and after the time when I did smoke). In lots of cases, the way life mirrors art or art mirrors life is mysterious to me, but in this case it is very plain.

Here's A.O. Scott in this week's Movies Update:

In the movie-smoking debate, even clear positions — that children must be protected from images that might influence their behavior, or that filmmakers should be immune from censorship and interference — tend quickly to be fogged with questions of context and nuance. That is because underneath the public discussion about smoking (or gun violence, or sexual promiscuity, or whatever social problem has seized the momentary spotlight) is another, much more confused discourse: about movies and about the ways they mirror and occlude reality.

The power of movies is undeniable, but also elusive. Even the children whose fragile psyches grown-ups fret about know that what movies depict is not real, and yet even the most sophisticated or jaded viewers habitually peruse the screen in search of designs for living. The screen is, among other things, a domain of glamour, in which ordinary actions are given a luster, a charisma, far beyond what they possess in the everyday world.

--"This Article Is Not Yet Rated"

This is from like a year ago but I am re-delighted

Stain of Poetry This Friday!

DOOOOO IT.

Don't let the winter get you down! Ride the snow yak into the sunset with Priscilla Becker, Laura Carter, Suzanne Frischkorn, Kate Greenstreet, Becca Klaver & D.W. Lichtenberg:

STAIN OF POETRY
Friday, January 22 @ 7 p.m

Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway
(corner of Dodworth St)
Brooklyn, NY 11221-3013
(718) 453-6343
[map]

J M Z trains to Myrtle Ave
or J train to Kosciusko St

Hosted by Amy King and Ana Božičević

Madeline Gins + Arakawa

"Couple's Dreams of Immortality at Death's Door, Thanks to Madoff: Artists Who Design Homes to Prolong Life Lost Their Life Savings; Undulating Floors"

[PDF]

*

WORD RAIN by Madeline Gins (Grossman Publishers, 1969)

Table of Contents

1. The Waterfall of An Introduction

2. The Introduction of the Waft or Paraphrased Sensibility

3. A. Reading in the Rain or The Multiplication of Consciousness

B. More or Later

4. The Body of Letters or The Motion of Words

5. Fog in the Tunnel or Intruding Words

6. A Type of Rainbow or By Order of Words

7. Dust Storm or The Pulverization of the Metaphor

8. Lightning or The Wording of the Reader

9. A. Mist and Flood Evaporating Endings

B. Condensation The Reader and the Weather

I Was Scrolling Thru the Golden Globe Nominations

and suddenly the categories struck me as super hilarious. What other industry hands out awards divided along gender lines?

What if there were a Best Female Poet category for the Pulitzer Prize?

What if the Oscars gave out a g-damn Best Woman Director statue(tte) (hehe) every year?

"Golden Boy" by Little Claw

This song is weird and scary and long and good.

Please Somebody

I'm Wikipedia-ing words in Harryette Mullen's poems for my paper, and although I don't have time to do it right now, I thought somebody out there might want to edit this pretty awful entry for "Bluestocking." The "See also" section is especially hilarious.

Harryette Mullen, from "Imagining the Unimagined Reader: Writing to the Unborn and Including the Excluded"

"My desires as a poet are contradictory. I aspire to write poetry that would leave no insurmountable obstacle to comprehension and pleasure other than the ultimate limits of the reader's interest and linguistic competence. However, I do not necessarily approach this goal by employing a beautiful, pure, simple, or accessible literary language, or by maintaining a clear, consistent, recognizable, or authentic voice in my work. At this point in my life, I am more interested in working with language per se than in developing or maintaining my own particular voice or style of writing, although I am aware that my poems may constitute a peculiar idiolect that can be identified as mine. I think of writing as a process that is synthetic rather than organic, artificial rather than natural, human rather than divine. My inclination is to pursue what is minor, marginal, idiosyncratic, trivial, debased, or aberrant in the language that I speak and write. I desire that my work appeal to an audience that is diverse and inclusive, at the same time that I wonder if human beings will ever learn how to be inclusive without repressing human diversity through cultural and linguistic imperialism."

Rachel Blau DuPlessis, "Draft 48: Being Astonished," Section 15

"Cut with a Kitchen Knife." "We called this photomontage because it reflected our aversion to claiming to be artists. We regarded ourselves as engineers; we maintained that we were building things; we said we put our works together like fitters."

We called this writing because it reflected our aversion to claiming to be poets. Poetry had a place for us. Poetry staged us there, not a leg to stand on. Pretty in pink; plenty up. Poetry made us poettes. The show before the show. Kick, girls, you've got great legs. But we wanted all that--poet, poette, makir, shaker--on our terms, in your face, on everyone's territory. The way we had to struggle to get it; struggle with our peers; struggle with our friends; struggle with our selves; with our constricted throat, and with the apparent history of poetry. But we regarded ourselves as constructors; we maintained that we were building things; we said we put our works together from some materials, the materials of every day and rearranging. The whole dictionary glossolalia-ed, tip tongue, agitations of syntax, extra-sequence, multilingual sententia, language clots, big prostheses and assessments. We cut with our fine-tuned scissors photos of generals, brand name products, sand from the playground, under-ripe peaches, trash on the exit ramp. Mucilage--the musty juice. Pasted. We stick. We keep Journals of Ordinary Thought. We had hard times, money sour, fake promises (forget resources), coffee breaks, "liked your 'performance'"--huh?--unmatched black fabrics, dead people's nightgowns in the thrift store, overcast (stitch? weather?) this--This is where. This was the claim, this was the site of the lives we were in, this was our sex and our place and our caste, this was our race and this was our slap, this was our color, and our matter; this was the baby, the adolescent, and the father; this was the hot dance, the cold tap, the implacable fact, the urges that we wanted urgently to Make From. We made it matter. "To Investigate." "To Layer." "To Disclose." "To Activate." "To Cut with" "A" "Kitchen Knife."

[pp. 244-5, We Who Love to Be Astonished: Experimental Women's Writing and Performance Poetics, eds. Laura Hinton and Cynthia Hogue. DuPlessis' note: "15. Hannah Hoch's collage; she is also the source of the citation about photomontage. Allusion to work by Barbara Cole."]